Find and interate all SMS/MMS messages in android

Question

First and foremost, I found this answer particularly helpful. However, it made me wonder how one goes about finding such information.

I can't seem to figure out how to iterate all the messages in my inbox. My current solution uses Uri.parse("content://mms-sms/conversations") in which I give use "_id" and "ct_t". However, it seems I only find the three conversations in my phone despite having 30 msges (20 of them in the save conversation thread and the others divided between two other conversations). Would make sense for such a statement content://mms-sms/conversations. However, the other providers seem to deal only with SMS OR MMS. Isn't there a way to just iterate the entire list of messages in this fashion where I replace "content://mms-sms/conversations" with something else?

public boolean refresh() {
    final String[] proj = new String[]{"_id","ct_t"};
    cursor = cr.query(Uri.parse("content://mms-sms/conversations"),proj,null,null,null);
    if(!(cursor.moveToFirst())) {
        empty = true;
        cursor.close();
        return false;
    }
    return true;
}

I iterate the messages with a next function

    public boolean next() {

        if(empty) {
            cursor.close();
            return false;
        }
        msgCnt = msgCnt + 1;

        Msg msg;
        String msgData = cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("ct_t"));
        if("application/cnd.wap.multipart.related".equals(msgData)) {
            msg = ParseMMS(cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("_id")));
        } else {
            msg = ParseSMS(cursor.getString(cursor.getColumnIndex("_id")));
        }


        if(!(cursor.moveToNext())) {
            empty = true;
            cursor.close();
            return false;
        }

        return true;
    }

Answer 1

Isn't there a way to just iterate the entire list of messages in this fashion where I replace "content://mms-sms/conversations" with something else?

It is possible to get all MMS and SMS messages in a single query using the content://mms-sms/complete-conversations URL. For some odd reason, there is no Uri field for this in the Telephony.MmsSms class, but it's been available since at least Froyo.

Using this single query will certainly be more efficient than querying the tables separately, and any sorting, grouping, or filtering that needs to be done will definitely be faster performed by the SQLite engine than by manipulating Java collections.

Please note that you must use a specific projection for this query. You cannot pass null or the * wildcard. Furthermore, it would be advisable to include MmsSms.TYPE_DISCRIMINATOR_COLUMN ("transport_type") in your projection - which will have a value of either "mms" or "sms" - to easily distinguish the message type.

The selection, selectionArgs, and orderBy arguments work as usual, and null can be passed for any or all of them.